The present invention relates to an assembly and disassembly station having an automatic programmable repetitive cycle for piece-clamping fixtures on supporting pallets.
In the world of machine tools, "pallets" refers to plates on which pieces to be machined are clamped using suitable fixtures, and are moved from one or more holding stations to one or more machining, washing or measurement stations.
The clamping fixtures utilized for these pallets are of the most diverse types and must be designed on a case by case basis in relation to the shape and size of the piece to be machined, to the features of the machine tool, to the machining accuracy required and to the quantity of pieces to be machined.
Many attempts have been made to avoid having each clamping fixture redesigned from scratch and constructed specially.
One of these is represented by the pallet described in the Italian patent application No. 22932 A/87 dated Dec. 10, 1987, which provides for a plurality of anchoring elements adjustable in height and in angular orientation, with which it is possible to use modular components for the formation of the clamping fixture required on each occasion.
In this way, the number of different components in stock may be substantially reduced, and the necessity is avoided of having to design specific components for the individual pieces to be machined.
However, certain drawbacks remain, of which the main one's may be summarized as follows:
the different operations for adjusting the pallet's anchoring elements, and for assemblying and disassemblying the clamping fixtures are still executed by hand;
the cost of reassembly of a fixture which has already been used and disassembled is equal to that of first assembly;
repetitive operations in the selection of the fixture's modular components, such as the composition of the lengths, the calculation of the clamping forces, the calculation of the deformations of the components, must be executed anew on each occasion.